Hello all--
I'm about ready to bottle my first-ever batch of mead. (I've got about a dozen batches of beer under my belt... figuratively and literally... ) I pretty much followed Papazian's Barkshack Gingermead recipe. My fermentables for a 5 gal batch were 7.5 lb honey, 1.5 lb corn sugar, and 2.25 lb raspberries. Added Red Star champagne yeast and away it went. So far so good.
I was planning to bottle my mead just as I would bottle beer: 5 oz priming sugar, 12 oz bottles, regular bottlecaps, etc. However, my local homebrew supply guy told me that I can't do that, because the champagne yeast will blow my bottles up. I've read up as much as I can on the topic and I think he's wrong. An online mead calculator told me that I should be at about 9.5% ABV. My champagne yeasties should have ripped through every bit of fermentable sugar in the months since brew day. So by bottling time my only fermentable sugars will be a standard 5 oz dose of corn sugar. I don't see why champagne yeast would make way more CO2 than beer yeast out of the same amount of priming sugar.
That being said, I'd really like to have someone who knows what they're doing reassure me that I'm not going to be turning my whole batch of mead into grenades.
Thanks in advance for any useful thoughts, and even for the not-so-useful ones!
--Beaneater
I'm about ready to bottle my first-ever batch of mead. (I've got about a dozen batches of beer under my belt... figuratively and literally... ) I pretty much followed Papazian's Barkshack Gingermead recipe. My fermentables for a 5 gal batch were 7.5 lb honey, 1.5 lb corn sugar, and 2.25 lb raspberries. Added Red Star champagne yeast and away it went. So far so good.
I was planning to bottle my mead just as I would bottle beer: 5 oz priming sugar, 12 oz bottles, regular bottlecaps, etc. However, my local homebrew supply guy told me that I can't do that, because the champagne yeast will blow my bottles up. I've read up as much as I can on the topic and I think he's wrong. An online mead calculator told me that I should be at about 9.5% ABV. My champagne yeasties should have ripped through every bit of fermentable sugar in the months since brew day. So by bottling time my only fermentable sugars will be a standard 5 oz dose of corn sugar. I don't see why champagne yeast would make way more CO2 than beer yeast out of the same amount of priming sugar.
That being said, I'd really like to have someone who knows what they're doing reassure me that I'm not going to be turning my whole batch of mead into grenades.
Thanks in advance for any useful thoughts, and even for the not-so-useful ones!
--Beaneater